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Asheville airport poised for growth, runway replacement

ASHEVILLE, N.C. -- Whether it's serving as a hub for thousands of campers flooding the mountains in the summer or having the potential to become hub for a cargo carrier, Asheville Regional Airport wants to

Asheville airport poised for growth, runway replacement

A United Express flight from Chicago lands at Asheville Regional Airport. The airport will launch a five-year, $64 million improvement project in August. Work will include replacing the current runway and adding a taxiway.(Photo: Bill Sanders, Citizen-Times of Asheville)

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ASHEVILLE, N.C. -- Whether it's serving as a hub for thousands of campers flooding the mountains in the summer or having the potential to become hub for a cargo carrier, Asheville Regional Airport wants to stand ready.

And it stands ready to spend $64 million to get there.

"This is the biggest construction project since the airport was built and opened in 1961," said Tina Kinsey, airport spokeswoman. "It's a milestone. This is historic for our region."

They're calling it Project SOAR, an acronym for Significant Opportunity for Aviation & the Region, a five-year project that will involve replacing the current runway and adding a taxiway.

Coupled with the addition in recent years of about 36 usable acres, thanks to millions of pounds of coal ash fill from the nearby Duke Energy power plant at Lake Julian, the airport is poised to grow — and entice cargo haulers, aeronautical companies or other potential employers.

The airport will host a groundbreaking ceremony for Project SOAR Aug. 8.

The changes most likely will boost the prospect of bringing in commercial companies, but it also will better position the airport to offer more flights in the future.

"Essentially, this project ensures that commercial air service can continue to operate and grow in Western North Carolina for another 50-plus years," Kinsey said.

Some misconceptions about the project have made the rounds, she said. The airport is not adding a second runway; rather this is a runway replacement project.

The airport will construct a temporary runway on the west side of the airfield that will be used for several years while the permanent runway is built. When the permanent runway is finished, the temporary runway will become a west-side taxi-way, giving the airport a center runway with taxi-ways on both sides.

While Asheville Regional gets stiff competition from airports in Charlotte and Greenville, S.C., its usage has continued to climb. It saw 678,023 passengers on commercial flights in 2013, up from 633,023 in 2012. The recent peak came in 2010, at 735,760.

The airport serves about 2,000 passengers a day, inbound and outbound, with 22-25 daily flights on Delta, US Airways, United and Allegiant, which offer direct flights from Asheville to eight cities: Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Detroit, Newark, New York, Orlando and Philadelphia.

Asheville keeps making top 10 lists, and visitors have discovered the city's charms, so airport usage will continue to climb.

"I was downtown the other day — it was about 6 p.m. on a Friday — and there were street performers, mimes, the drum circle was going on. It was like New York City," said Julie Springsteen, a schoolteacher who works in the summer for Outward Bound, in part greeting campers at the airport, as she was doing Wednesday "So anything they can do to make it more economical to fly in and out and grow to accommodate the increasing number of tourists, that makes sense."

Visitors to the airport may notice some work going on now near the main entrance by Interstate 26 and by the second entrance at Fanning Bridge Road. To the south of the Fanning Bridge entrance, land is being cleared for a Triangle Stop gas station and convenience store, which will lease the land from the airport.

In the coming months, the airport will move the main entrance a little farther south from its current location, placing it directly across from J&S Cafeteria. The move is necessary because of a N.C. Department of Transportation project to rework the I-26/Airport Road interchange.

Targeting economic development

The combination of about 36 acres of flat, developable land and two taxiways will make the airport much more attractive to companies looking to expand or relocate, which local economic development officials hope to capitalize on.

"We respond to projects as they come in, but I can tell you aerospace is a target industry for us, and I know it has been for Henderson and Buncombe counties as well," said Scott Hamilton, president and CEO of AdvantageWest, a nonprofit regional economic development partnership that serves the 23 westernmost counties of North Carolina.

Having the west side of the airport runway and apron open up means that area "could support aerospace-related businesses," ranging from component makers to airplane maintenance companies.

AdvantageWest, which is based at the airport, often receives "requests for proposals" from companies looking to expand or locate here, and those RFPs often note that they want to be within a certain distance of an airport with direct connections to particular cities, Hamilton said.

Kinsey said the new taxiway will be on a portion of the newly created land, "but the majority of that land will be available for future aeronautical development.

"For instance, and this is just an example of what could happen, say a cargo facility said they want to be in Western North Carolina," Kinsey said. "Now we have an airport with accessible land where there could be a terminal and a facility where they could access the taxiway and runway."

Coupled with nearby Ferncliff Industrial Park, where beer company Sierra Nevada has located its East Coast brewery, the airport improvements and extra land will be attractive to companies looking to move or expand here, Hamilton said.

In need of work

The new runway will be the same length as the current one, 8,001 feet (engineers add the extra foot as a precaution so they won't be short). But it will boast more room between taxiways, which will bring it up to current Federal Aviation Administration specifications.

The current runway is reaching the end of its life, and airport officials had to decide if it made sense to resurface and squeeze another decade out of it, or embark on the larger project and bring it up to modern standards. FAA regulations require more space between taxiways and runways, and the Asheville airport, like many older facilities in the country, has been grandfathered in.

The runway was extended in 1980 from 6,500 feet to 8,001 feet. When this project is complete, it will remain the same length, which is long enough to accommodate a Boeing 747, but the airport does have the land for a future extension if necessary.

Kinsey said the airport's 20-year plan calls for the expansion on the west side of the airfield and adding buildings, but passenger projections and airport usage did not warrant building a second runway.

"If you look at the population growth for us, it's not as quick as a Charlotte or a Raleigh, but it is solid growth," Kinsey said. "What we have in our area is a strong demographic of air travelers, frequent travelers. Demographically, we have more leisure than business travelers in our area, but if you look at all the trips taken, 50 percent of them are business travelers. Business travelers are buying more tickets."

Flat Rock resident Terrell West is one of those leisure travelers. A retired community college administrator, he flies out of Asheville Regional a few times a year and was there Wednesday greeting a relative flying in from Iraq.

He's glad to see the airport growing.

"It's very important to this area economically, for every reason, and not just for tourists but also for the businesses that use it," he said.

No second runway

But West would like to see a second runway, saying the more modern runway and taxiways of Project SOAR could lead to growth that will necessitate another runway.

Kinsey said the FAA makes decisions about runways and expansions, looking at projected utilization and regional growth.

"They make decisions on funding for the entire aviation system, based on those analyses and prioritization," she said. "Our projected growth and the size of the region, and the projected utilization and use by other aircraft, does not warrant the addition of a second runway by the FAA. One runway really should serve this community far into the future."

Kathleen Bergen, an FAA spokeswoman in Atlanta, referred all questions back to the airport.

While it likely won't become an international airport, Asheville Regional will get steadily busier. Airport and FAA data shows a steady increase in "enplanements" — the number of passengers boarding commercial aircraft — from 1995, when it stood at 294,788, to 2010, when it hit 349,880.

Projections call for those numbers to rise to 394,721 next year, 432,090 in 2020 and 518,051 in 2030.

Ben Teague, a senior vice president at the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce and executive director of the Economic Development Coalition, said "a few companies have been in the pipeline and looked at opportunities" at the airport.

"I have not had clients say, 'You're just a one-runway kind of town.' I haven't had them bring that concern up," Teague said. "They're interested in accessibility. And there is a tipping point with certain types of companies where they don't want to go to a Charlotte-type airport because it's too big, too busy. And a Charlotte-type airport doesn't want them because they've got so many planes on the runways already. So I think we're the right size for certain companies."

More enplanements means more motorists driving to the airport, and projections suggest the airport's 1,465 parking spaces will become inadequate as soon as by 2015, when projected demand hits 1,610. That number soars to 2,065 by 2030, resulting in a deficit of 600 spaces.

The airport's master plan includes the potential for a parking deck on airport-owned land, but at this point that is still a projection.

For now, they're concentrating on the replacement runway and new taxiway — and luring economic development.

Airport Executive Director Lew Bleiweis said the runway pavement project should serve the airport's aviation needs for another 50 years.

"Project SOAR is a milestone for the region that will be looked upon by future generations as a project that contributed to growth and economic strength in WNC," Bleiweis said.

About Project SOAR

On Aug. 8, Asheville Regional Airport will embark on a major, five-year building project that will result in a new runway and taxiway for the facility, which was built in 1961. When finished, the airport will have one main runway, flanked by taxiways on each side. The airport also has about 36 acres of flat, developable land that it hopes to use to entice aerospace companies, cargo haulers, airplane maintenance companies or others to locate at the airport.

Scope: The temporary runway (which will become a future taxiway) and replacement runway will require 90,000 tons of asphalt, nearly 3 miles of drainage pipe, more than 1,000 airfield light fixtures and 20.6 miles of airfield cabling and wiring.